Eighteenth annual report of the county and city of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

  • Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eighteenth annual report of the county and city of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    several organs of tlie system, which are observed to occur at advanced periods of life. The health of the male Patients was not so satisfactory as that of the females, but no epidemic disease prevailed. More cases of tubercular disease have been observed, and of a more active form, than had been the case for many previous years, and this condition was found present not only in patients recently admitted, but the disease appeared in several patients to develope itself while they were resident in your Asylum. More than the usual proportion of patients of this sex were found to suffer from boils and other low forms of inflammatory affections of an erythematous or erysipelatous character, implicating the integument and subjacent cellular textures. The indications to your Superintendent from such recurrences of disease of a special type, led him to conclude that the limits of accommo¬ dation for the Patients of this sex had been exceeded, and that the general tone of their health gave indications of the results which always accrue when any prolonged departure from the recognized principles and rules of sanitary medicine has been allowed to continue in operation. Independently of any adverse influences which may result in respect of the general health of insane Patients from placing too large a number in a given space, the special moral treatment peculiarly applicable to their several states of mind cannot be satisfactorily nor successfully carried out, and we find that irritability, excitement, and chronic discontent and restlessness, occupy the foremost places in the thoughts, dispositions, and habits of those in whom we wish to replace such characteristics by quietness and calmness of mind and manner, and a ready compliance with the provisions and arrangements of the Asylum, where such objects can only be accomplished. The discussions regarding the Dietary necessary in an Asylum for the chronic insane, and the idiots, have been